Let us know in the comments below. And if you have a spare $700, you can buy a 3DO on eBay and stare at it, wondering what could have been.
When Core Design announced Tomb Raider , it was a technical marvel. The fully 3D environments, the fluid (if blocky) animation of Lara, and the atmospheric lighting were cutting edge. It was announced for PC, PlayStation, Saturn... and the 3DO.
Rumors persist that the port was actually running—albeit poorly. Frame rates in the single digits. Severe texture warping. The developers reportedly looked at the PS1’s dedicated geometry transformation engine, looked back at the 3DO’s general-purpose CPU, and threw in the towel. tomb raider 3do
By the spring of 1997, Eidos Interactive officially canceled the 3DO version. It was simply too late. The Saturn version sold poorly enough; a 3DO version would have been financial suicide. To this day, no ROM, no beta, no prototype of the 3DO version of Tomb Raider has ever surfaced.
And for a brief, tantalizing moment, Lara Croft was supposed to join it. Let us know in the comments below
When the press asked Trip Hawkins (3DO’s founder) why Tomb Raider was canceled, he deflected. He didn't say "We couldn't run it." He said "The market shifted."
In a parallel universe, the 3DO survived another year, and Tomb Raider became its swan song. In our universe, the 3DO was a footnote, and Lara found her true home on the grey box from Sony. The Tomb Raider for 3DO isn't remembered for how it played—because it never did. It’s remembered for what it represents: the final nail in the 3DO’s coffin. The fully 3D environments, the fluid (if blocky)
The market did shift. It shifted away from expensive, multimedia boxes and toward focused gaming machines. But for a brief moment in 1996, Lara Croft was supposed to help one last console stand up.